When Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) has an existential crisis due to unrelenting thoughts of death, the appearance of cellulite, and a sudden flattening of her feet, she is forced to transition from her world into our own. We learn this when the heroin visits Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who isn’t what she used to be because her owner played with her too hard. The brutal play regimen resulted in chopped hair, a marker-tatted face, and legs bent into eternal splits.

By now Christopher Nolan’s reputation and track record are capable of marketing a movie all their own. His affinity for bombastic effects and somewhat distracting scores have become a double-edged sword. While the effects and editing in this movie are impressive, the fact that no special effects were used is something I only would have known from reading headlines, as it didn’t really seem necessary while watching the film.

Along with the tired story, “Gray Matter” features severely underdeveloped characters. Isaac and Dukes are fine considering the material they’re given to work with, but both  characters are nothing more than rough sketches of human beings. Dukes is the protective mom, constantly uptight and worried, while Isaac is the rebellious youth convinced her mother is overreacting.

Before he hit 20, Blanchard was capable of making tens of thousands of dollars by stealing electronics and bringing them back for full cash returns. Then he moved on to robbing ATMs at banks with methods that seem ripped from movie plots. He started by disguising himself as a worker to get into a bank under construction, then left cameras and mics to keep tabs on the workers so he would know when the bank would be vulnerable.

Disney made headlines in early June when its latest Pixar outing Elemental grossed $29.6 million on its opening weekend – an all-time low for the studio. This, along with the financial failures of Strange Worlds and Lightyear, suggests Disney animations struggle to get families back in the theater following the pandemic. Disney’s rush into streaming post-pandemic may prove costly as its animated projects continue to wither.

Since the artifact, which the movie is centered on, involves time travel, I was worried that the plot would jump the shark with some weird-looking young Harrison Ford or revisiting scenes from past movies, but thankfully this doesn’t do that. That’s not to say things don’t get crazy towards the end, but it’s a lot more creative than I thought it would be and makes for a good ending to what is likely the last “Indiana Jones” movie.

While the film deals with themes of grief, government suppression, and love, it’s the theme of moving on that is most interesting. The freight train that moves through town does a good job of symbolizing the sometimes grim reality of life. You move forward, pick up baggage along the way, and even though there are moments that make you wish you could stop time, you have to keep going.

The real pitfall here is how bad and unenthusiastic the voice acting is. I was interested that Patton Oswalt and Ron Perlman were in the movie -- Oswalt as the fish man Aesop and Perlman as the villain -- but was shocked by their performances. Perlman in particular sounds monotone, as though he’s reading a phonebook. He has an extensive resume in videogames and animation, so I can only assume his lackluster performance here is because of a lack of direction or knowing that the material wasn’t worth the effort.

Charlie Day plays a man recently released from a mental institution who has no ability to communicate with people and is largely unaware of the things going on around him. Making the character mute could have been done well, but when that character is also incapable of communicating, it makes it difficult to find him compelling. Even though his body language can be funny, it’s mostly up to the rest of the cast to deliver jokes -- which has mixed results.

The documentary starts by showing how the rich heiresses of New York became celebrities and chased by paparazzi as though they were deities. When blogging exploded on the internet, many were dedicated to forming narratives out of the celebrities’ escapades and would slant reality into a salacious tabloid. I was constantly asking myself “Who would choose to get caught up in this world?”